Ezekiel Sedayne was a famed and highly skilled human scientist, particularly in the realm of genetic engineering, who served as the second director of the Imperial Biotechnical Division during the time of the Horus Heresy.
Sedayne's personality, skills and memories were later merged into the mind of Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
Sedayne's knowledge helped to provide Cawl with his later extraordinary skill at biogenetic engineering. Sedayne's personality remains deeply buried within the gestalt that is now Cawl's mind in the late 41st Millennium.
History[]
Ezekiel Sedayne had been born on Terra during the Age of Strife. At some point during that period, he had actually met the man who would one day become the Emperor of Mankind even before humanity's most powerful psyker had taken that title.
At their first meeting, the Emperor greeted Sedayne as "Belisarius Cawl" and stated that one day he must continue the Master of Mankind's work to save humanity. The Emperor warned the confused young man that there would come a time when he would believe that his actions were actually a betrayal of all the Emperor had sought to achieve, but that he must persevere at all costs.
In truth, this message was meant for the future Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl, who the Emperor had foreseen in His psychic prescience would one day inherit all of Sedayne's knowledge and memories.
Sedayne's later recollection of the conversation with the Master of Mankind would grow vague, and he would have trouble remembering exactly what had transpired.
Sedayne later joined the early Imperium's Biotechnical Division and became one of the Emperor's most skilled scientists. He would work to help create the Space Marine Legions under the direction of the Biotechnical Division's first director, Amar Astarte.
Astarte created the first prototype of the Space Marine gene-seed organ that would become the Black Carapace, but the original design proved non-functional. Sedayne believed that one of his greatest achievements was taking over that project from Astarte and producing the final, workable design of the implant still used by the Space Marines of the 41st Millennium.
By the time of the Horus Heresy, Sedayne had been named Lord Geneticist and Astarte's replacement as the director of the Biotechnical Division. He would evidence some disdain or even outright hostility for his predecessor.
Sedayne was also at this point an extremely old man, whose body was beginning to collapse despite extensive Rejuvenat treatments. Determined to continue the Emperor's work, Sedayne hoped to achieve immortality by claiming the cloning and digital mind-copying technology that had been developed by the Mechanicum Tech-priest Belisarius Cawl.
Sedayne had Cawl recalled to Terra on a pretext and then ordered his servant Altrix Herminia to shoot Friedisch Adum Ship Qvo, a fellow Tech-priest and close friend and colleague who had accompanied Cawl to the Throneworld after they had escaped from the clutches of the Traitor forces. Mortally wounded, Sedayne stated that his rejuvenation treatments could save Friedisch if Cawl merged with his mind using the technology he had developed.
Arrogant to the last, Sedayne believed that in any merger of the two personalities, his would emerge as the dominant one. Cawl agreed to save his friend, but after Sedayne's mind was combined cybernetically with Cawl's, it was the Tech-priest's that emerged as dominant. Though his knowledge and skills were now at Cawl's command, Sedayne's own personality was buried deep within the gestalt of many different personalities that over the centuries would come to form the mind of Belisarius Cawl.
Sources[]
- Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work (Novel) by Guy Haley, Chs. 19, 23, 27